AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Fifty-six percent of Texans support making it a state crime for an undocumented immigrant to be in Texas, according to the latest Texas Politics Project poll, showing healthy support for the legislature’s major border security initiative, even as it faces possible legal peril.
Even 27% of Democrats support the new state crime established under Senate Bill 4, which allows state police and judges to order migrants into Mexico. Legal experts have called the challenge to federal authority unconstitutional, and it is already the target of legal challenges from civil rights groups like the ACLU.
Some legal challenges have accused Senate Bill 4 of opening the door to racial profiling and denying due process to migrants and citizens alike. Hispanics are split in their views, however.
The poll found 41% of Hispanic Texans statewide support the measure, while 43% oppose.
The poll surveyed 1,200 registered voters across Texas in the first ten days of December. 61% reported they support increasing state funding for constructing a border wall, including 29% of Democrats and 47% of Hispanics.
“It’s in, a lot of ways, why this is a good issue for Republicans,” Executive Director of the Texas Politics Project Jim Henson said. “Republican voters, including primary voters, love measures like this. Democrats, on balance, don’t favor them, but there are enough Democrats that are okay with it that it makes a pretty good general election issue, too.”
On Tuesday, Texas sent its first plane of migrants to Chicago, expanding the largely popular initiative of bussing migrants out of state. Fifty-two percent of Texans support that move, according to an August 2022 Texas Politics Project poll, including more than one in five Democrats.
“At the direction of Governor Abbott, the Texas Division of Emergency Management is utilizing multiple means of transportation, to include aircraft, to voluntarily transport migrants released by the federal government in overwhelmed Texas border communities. We will continue our border disaster response operations until directed by the Governor to do otherwise,” Texas Division of Emergency Management’s Chief of Media Seth Christensen said.
Christensen said the flights are funded through Operation Lone Star “in the same way the buses have been,” but did not immediately provide the total cost of the first flight. Nexstar has requested those records.
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